Although Retro Studios has had a mess of trouble, canned projects and several layoffs for once we can report some good news, by way of GameSpot on its work on the highly anticipated Metroid Prime. Although it won’t be playable at SpaceWorld, GameSpot has heard directly from Retro who reports the game’s first level has been completed and is being evaluated by Nintendo.

Here’s the an excerpt:

A source within Retro Studios has updated GameSpot on the status of its upcoming GameCube game Metroid Prime. The development team is close to completing the game's first level and has recently sent a playable build to Nintendo for review. Originally, it was planned that the build would be shown in playable form at next week's Space World, but, according to various sources, Nintendo may opt to show the game only in video form, as it did at this year's E3. Interestingly, portions of the E3 video are actually from the game's opening CG sequence, which shows Samus' ship landing inside a hangar and the game's heroine emerging from a port on top of the vessel. Following this intro sequence the game switches to its title screen and menu. According to our source, "the cut-scenes in the game look amazing and are done very cinematically."

Much of the gameplay in Metroid Prime will be from a first-person perspective, but there will be instances when the camera pulls back into a third-person view. For example, when Samus goes into her familiar rolling-ball form the camera will zoom out and show her from a third-person perspective.

Part of this sounds similar to the cut scenes shown at E3, where Samus emerges from the top of her ship. When asked about the Metroid Prime at E3, Miyamoto said it was nearly shown playable then, though apparently further along, Nintendo still isn’t ready to let fans get their hands on Samus just yet…